I rode my bike all the time when I was younger.
I rode a fair amount when I was 9 and 10, but the neighborhood where we lived in Chicago was laid out as a grid, so I never really had to worry about getting lost. I was also fairly young, so I wasn’t going to venture too far away from home. I would usually ride up to the park a couple blocks away and then circle back around, although I do remember widening my radius gradually around the time I turned 11. A month after my birthday, though, my family moved to Long Island, New York, which was a more typical suburban neighborhood. We had left the grid behind; our new home was in an area with winding streets and lush green lawns. Everything was new for me, from the strip malls and diners to the stand-alone houses and the people with their “Lon-Giland” accents. I didn’t meet a lot of other kids right away, so I spent a lot of time on my bike. Continue reading “Riding Like the Wind”
